Wood anemone

Anemone quinquefolia, American wood anemone or nightcaps, is a slender, low-growing perennial herb in the family Ranunculaceae native to deciduous forests and woodland edges of eastern North America, from Quebec and Maine south through the Appalachians and west to Iowa. Plants arise from slender, branching, horizontal rhizomes and form colonies in moist, humus-rich soils. Each flowering stem is 10–25 cm tall and bears a single whorl of three compound leaves about midway up; each leaf is divided into three to five toothed, lance-shaped to elliptic leaflets, the lateral pair often again deeply lobed so the leaf appears five-parted. A single flower nods slightly above the foliage on a short pedicel; it has no true petals but five (rarely four to nine) showy white, ovate, petaloid sepals, often tinged pink or purplish on the reverse, surrounding numerous yellow stamens. The fruit is a head of small, pubescent, beaked achenes. Flowering occurs in spring before the forest canopy closes.